During 2021, a small delegation from laSIA has explored the experimentation of formats from one place: the Malakate Aguirre field, in Berango. The results of this research are collected in two of the notebooks included in the collection of publications of the Harri Orri Ar Seminar. But not all the results are included in the publication, nor does the context appear, which is why we have prepared this entry on the web.

MALAKATE AGUIRRE
The place is this:

Everything started from an image by Veva in which she superimposed different frames from a video she recorded there. Here it is that video:

In that image a small construction could be slightly distinguished, it could look like a kind of triumphal arch or stacked bales of straw and we called it the door of the academy. Then it turned out to be a Malakate, a door to the depths of the sewerage. The malakates were the registers, ventilation and accesses to the sanitation channel that came from Bilbao to the Tunel Boca beach. (https://lasiaweb.com/en/2019/07/12/serantes-seminar-day-3-july-1-2019/) The works were completed in 1903 assuming the first modern infrastructure of the peninsula with this function.

We met periodically in a room of the Faculty of Fine Arts and we also approached the place several times, which except for Veva, we did not know; the perception suddenly changed, it was perhaps smaller than we thought.

DOCUMENTATION
Among the documentation, we made photos, videos and drawings.

Unai mapped the place with a 3D LiDAR scanner, making this video:

and different renderings:

Julen did not want to return to the malakate, in an exercise he called dibujación he proposed to draw different points of view using his memory:

Veva, from video frames that she recorded, analyzed movements of the trees in these two documents:
arbol.pdf / arbol2.pdf
and she also shaped the videos, looking like this:

MALAKATE.TTF TYPEFACE
As a result of a composition by Rita, in which some letters were replaced by photographs and also due to the suggestion in the text of the same piece, Unai created a typeface: Malakate.ttf
(It can be downloaded from here by clicking on the name). This monospace typeface is intended to convert any text into a map, because it is adapted to a modular system.

Meanwhile, we were reading and speaking from the reading of these texts:
Lukács, G. (2015[1910]), Esencia y forma del ensayo, Madrid: Sequitur
Bense, M. (2004[1942]), “Sobre el ensayo y su prosa”. México: CCyDEL-UNAM
Adorno, T. (2009[1958]), “El ensayo como forma”, en Notas sobre literatura. Obra completa 11. Madrid: Akal
From the encounter of the texts with the place, and looking for forms of visual essay, Rita proposed images such as this horse galloping essayistically:

Malakate Seminar has been integrated by: Veva Linaza, Julen Agirre, Rita Sixto and Unai Requejo